Reflections on Alien Visitors

The November-December issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains three articles about UFOs and extraterrestrials.

"UFO Identification Process," by Joe Nickell and James McGaha, offers an overview of the many different phenomena that can be mistaken for alien spaceships. The authors provide a list of common "UFOs" with their most likely explanations, broken down into multiple categories with several items under each. For instance, they cite five different classifications, with examples, under "Daylight Objects/Lights" and five under "Nocturnal Lights/Objects." It's interesting to discover how many common objects and events can fool the untrained observer and even some trained observers such as pilots. This kind of material could enhance the realism of a story about a UFO sighting. If a character rules out all the typical sources of mistaken identification, his or her conclusion that an actual spaceship has appeared will seem more credible.

Eric Wojciechowski, in "UFOs: Humanoid Aliens? Why So Varied?", advances the position that the widely varied descriptions of alleged alien visitors, diverse in appearance yet strangely all anthropomorphic, make a "psychological explanation" for the reported contacts more likely than "an alien intelligence interacting with human beings." Where the previous article evaluates sightings of apparent flying objects, this one deals with "close encounters" reported by people who claim to have actually seen extraterrestrials. The author maintains that the odds are overwhelmingly against the probability that diverse intelligent species have visited Earth, that almost all of them happen to be humanoid, and that they've managed to remain hidden from mainstream attention yet have revealed themselves to random individuals. He places heavy emphasis on the "anthropomorphic yet varied" factor. Although I don't believe the alleged alien encounters actually happened (not that I've made a formal study of the topic, but those I've read about look like attempts at writing science fiction by people who know very little about SF), I don't find this author's arguments totally convincing. Diversity rather than uniformity could just as well be offered as an argument FOR the truth of the reports, suggesting that they're not merely imitations of other witnesses' accounts. Also, I can easily think of explanations for the phenomena he considers unlikely. An interstellar organization composed of multiple species from various planets might be observing us, for instance, and the reason we meet only humanoids is that humanoid species are assigned to observe worlds inhabited by races similar to themselves. The reason they're often glimpsed, yet no solid proof of their presence has turned up, might be that they want to observe us without interfering but don't mind being noticed, like Jane Goodall with the chimpanzees.

Biologist David Zeigler's ingenious article, "Those Supposed Aliens Might Be Worms," speculates on what life-forms might turn out to be most common on other planets and answers (you guessed it) "worms." He considers intelligent humanoids highly unlikely and the popular expectation of such to be a case of a "limited line of imagination." Whereas the humanoid body shape has evolved only once on our planet (all the examples we know of being closely related), wormlike creatures have developed independently multiple times and inhabit almost every available ecosystem. He lists eight different categories of worms, and this catalog isn't exhaustive.

If we found worms of some type on another planet, what are the chances of their being intelligent? It's hard to imagine them with any kind of material technology in the absence of hands, tentacles, or other manipulative organs. But are such organs essential to the evolution of intelligence as we know it? It's widely believed that dolphins have near-human intelligence, and they don't possess manipulative appendages.

Tangentially, speaking of imagination, a two-page essay in this issue titled "Why We're Susceptible to Fake News—and How to Defend Against It," by one of the magazine's editors, conflates confirmation bias and the tendency to rationalize away evidence that might disprove one's entrenched beliefs with the mind-set of childhood make-believe scenarios. According to two psychologists quoted in the essay, Mark Whitmore and Eve Whitmore (there's no mention of whether they're related to each other), childhood beliefs absorbed from one's parents are said to be reinforced "as rationalization piles on top of rationalization over the years." This unfortunate outcome is allegedly made worse by the supposed fact that "Children's learning about make-believe and mastery of it becomes the basis for more complex forms of self-deception and illusion into adulthood." Parents unwittingly teach children "that sometimes it's okay to make believe things are true, even though they know they are not." It's hard to read this egregious misconception about the nature and value of imagination without screaming in outrage. From a fairly early age, children know the difference between fantasy "pretend play" and lies. Furthermore, fans of fantasy and other kinds of speculative fiction are less vulnerable to "self-deception" in relation to their preferred reading material than fans of "realistic" fiction. Readers of novels about extravagant success or exotic romance may indulge in (usually harmless) daydreams about the prospects of such events happening in their own lives. Fans of stories about supernatural beings, alternate worlds, distant planets, or the remote future aren't likely to expect to encounter such things firsthand. In AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM, C. S. Lewis labels this kind of reading "disinterested castle-building" as distinct from the normal "egoistic castle-building" of imagining one's real-life self in the position of the hero or heroine of a "realistic" novel and the pathological version of the latter, where the subject obsessively fantasizes about becoming a millionaire or winning the ideal romantic partner without making the slightest real-life effort to achieve those goals. The authorities quoted in that SKEPTICAL INQUIRER article seem to compare all fantasy play to the third category.

One more item of interest: The Romance Reviews website is holding a month-long promotional event throughout November. I'll be giving away a PDF of my story collection DAME ONYX TREASURES (fantasy and paranormal romance):

The Romance Reviews

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Plausibility of Modern Legends

I subscribe to the magazine SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, which I highly recommend to fans and writers of SF and fantasy. Its coverage of myths, legends, and hoaxes offers lots of story seeds and can help authors ensure that their characters respond rationally to incredible events rather than acting overly gullible. The latest issue contains a review of a new book about the Loch Ness Monster. I would like to believe in the monster (alas, the only mark of its presence we saw on our one-hour Loch Ness cruise during a tour of Scotland was a steep hill where Nessie was supposed to have slid down into the lake). Everything I've read about it, though, seems to support the position that the reported sightings in modern times comprise a combination of mistaken perceptions and deliberate photographic hoaxes. That a breeding population of large animals could survive in a confined area with no physical evidence being found after decades of searching does seem unlikely. (If the monster weren't a natural animal but an intelligent, magical creature, as in Jean Lorrah's Nessie series, that would be a different matter.)

Bigfoot (which I'd also love to believe in) seems more plausible. If Sasquatches existed, they'd be a small breeding population of a near-extinct species of primate, a very few individuals living in a vast tract of millions of acres of forest in the Pacific Northwest. There's nothing inherently unlikely about their existence being real but unproven, since they would have a strong motivation to remain hidden.

On the other hand, while I certainly believe life exists elsewhere in the universe, I reluctantly disbelieve all UFO "evidence" I've read about. Sightings and photographs have been convincingly debunked. As for the personal narratives of face-to-face contact and abductions, they sound like attempts at writing science fiction by people who don't know much of anything about science fiction. They don't make sense in terms of motivation. If aliens advanced enough to travel here from other stars wanted to make contact with us, maybe to pass on their wisdom and save us from extinction, wouldn't they reveal themselves openly to people in a position to change the world? Would beings of superior intelligence and unimaginably powerful technology make contact with an alien planet by grabbing random inhabitants whose reports are certain to be disbelieved? And if the aliens wanted to observe us without being noticed, they'd surely have the ability to do so.

Now, maybe they're observing us and don't care about remaining unseen. Maybe they're gradually accustoming us to their presence, like Jane Goodall with the chimpanzees. In that case, though, the alleged abductions don't make sense; the events as reported couldn't be telling the aliens anything about us they don't already know.

Slightly more plausible motivations: Earth is under galactic quarantine; visits to our solar system are forbidden under the alien equivalent of the Prime Directive. The briefly, ambiguously glimpsed craft in the sighting reports aren't supposed to be here. They're interstellar smugglers or other shady characters taking refuge from pursuit in a forbidden zone. As for the abductions, if they actually happened, I can think of only one credible explanation—the aliens are just messing with our heads. Either the rogue visitors are playing random pranks in a spirit of cruel fun, or extraterrestrial scientists are conducting psychological experiments on us inferior beings to find out how our culture will interpret this irrational behavior on the part of superior entities.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Whole-world Government

Let us imagine....

The governments of Earth are desperate. They are thrashing around, grasping at straws, manufacturing crisis after crisis. Global warming. Banking. Manufacturing. Avian/swine flu. STDs. Terrorism. Deficits. Anything to increase government control over massive populations, to invoke war-powers acts, to oblige the public to accept 1984-like surveillance and also semi-mandatory mass injections of goodness-knows-what.

This isn't a whacky conspiracy theory. We're imagining. This is an alien romance blog, remember.

New, never before classified cloud formations are discovered. For instance, Asperatus. (I'm interested in clouds. It doesn't mean that they mean anything in particular, but they have potential as hiding places, and as delivery systems, and as shields.)

Meanwhile, UFOs are filmed over Ireland, and in other places. They move like nothing on earth. They're not configured like any super-power's secret aircraft or ABM.

The movie industry puts out movie after movie about aliens. Many are benign. Some are blue. Some have bony heads. Some are Messiah-like ie Klatuu (The Day The Earth Stood Still).... see a partial list of all the movies with aliens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_extraterrestrials

Around 250 of them. Unfortunately, they are listed alphabetically. It would be really interesting to list them chronologically (with a synopsis) to see whether the portrayal of aliens has changed over time,  or whether there is any correlation between UFO sightings and subsequent sympathetic (or unsympathetic) alien characters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrials_in_fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrials_in_fiction_by_type

I digressed. Those are really interesting lists, though.

Suppose there really are aliens, and suppose they are very much like us... only more advanced. I presume that aliens would wish to negotiate with us, and that they'd prefer to negotiate, say, with someone like Her Majesty, The Queen of England, rather with an ephemeral, quarrelsome rabble who might be voted out of office before any interstellar treaty could be ratified.

What would be the impact on all of us if these superbeings were all one racial type, and suppose that their one racial type was like our popular image of one of the three Magi?












This is a photograph of a lenticular cloud, but suppose it were a huge, god-like hologram. Imagine what would have happened if, at the same time that this appeared, a voice boomed from the clouds in which "he" is sitting. Suppose it did, maybe over some secluded part of Russia, where former President Putin was fishing, and over Crawford Texas where President Bush was clearing scrub. Or perhaps they appeared to Al Gore. Or Jeff Bezos!

Interesting article about contrails http://www.theozonehole.com/airtraffic.htm

Would international statesmen decide that it would be in Earth's best interests if our one-world leader looked as much as possible like the aliens? How would we achieve that?

How would we manage a one-world government or a one-world leader? It seems that every attempt at global domination by one tribe or another has eventually failed, no matter how benign in concept at the outset (or not!)  Plato's Republic, The Third Reich, the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan's Empire, the USSR all collapsed. Maybe Lord Acton's Dictum is all too accurate. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

If we were to try again, (because we really need the aliens' help) how would we go about it?

The options would include an election from among world leaders similar to that of the Pope as shown in The Shoes Of The Fisherman  http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/44428/The-Shoes-of-the-Fisherman/overview

Another possibility would be the mystical elevation of a child, much the way a new Dalai Lama is found.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/27/tibet.china1

Would the election of a virtuous child as temporary Queen and figurehead, as in Star Wars, work?
http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/amidala/
Only, I guess, if the aliens were childlike --or hobbitlike-- in appearance.

One of the first issues to solve would be whether humans would want a temporary leader (elected, or rotating) or someone appointed for life (a monarch, a Caesar, a Protector, a Chairman, a Dictator, a Big Brother, an Emperor). This choice might be influenced by the longevity of the aliens, and the need for stability. Then, we'd have to decide whether the leadership would be heredity, and what legal and/or religious mechanisms might need to be in place to remove unsatisfactory leaders.

This isn't one, but it's interesting http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos164.htm


If the aliens were cool with elected bodies, we'd need a global version of Articles of Confederation http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_arti.html

Otherwise, if they insisted on a one-world-leader, we'd want a global Magna Carta
http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/magna-carta.htm

If we look to literature, there's Machiavelli's model, and that of 1984 and of Brave New World. We see worlds ruled by consortia of business leaders, cartels, single imperial leaders; by parliaments, by oligarchies, theocracies... the Wiki list is comprehensive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government

In Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, the world is ruled by the Jesuits and the Japanese. In Jack Vance's Demon Princes worlds, distant planets were settled (much as North America was) by exiles and evangelists of various religious denominations.

Is there anything we haven't tried?

Should we try, anyway? If these imaginary aliens want us to have a one-world government, is that a good and sufficient reason to give it to them?

All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/